As aircraft remain in service for several decades, oftentimes even beyond their expected service life, the wings of these aircraft may become corroded or otherwise damaged from prolonged service. This damage, which may include holes, tears, scratches, cuts, and/or the like in the skin of the wing, is particularly acute in high-speed aircraft. In high-speed applications, such damage may result in a change in the drag and/or lift coefficients of the wings, which may ultimately result in decreased performance, structural failure, and/or flight safety of the aircraft.
In many applications, the skin of an aircraft wing is attached to an underlying wing structure (e.g., spars, ribs, internal braces, and/or the like) by aligning a solid, undrilled skin portion over the underlying wing structure, and drilling fastener holes through the skin and into the underlying wing structure. Fasteners (e.g., rivets, JO-BOLTS, HI-LOCK fasteners, and/or the like) are then secured in the fastener holes to secure the skin to the underlying wing structure. While the number of fasteners ultimately used to secure the skin to the underlying wing structure varies in part on the size of the wing, many aircraft wings utilize thousands of fasteners to secure the skin to the underlying wing structure. Moreover, the fastener holes are often drilled by hand during the manufacturing process, resulting in a significant variation in the fastener hole pattern across different aircraft wings, even between aircrafts of the same model.
Because of the high degree of precision required in aligning aircraft wing skins over the underlying wing structure and the high degree of complexity involved in aligning thousands of hand-drilled fastener holes, aircraft wing skins have historically not been replaced once damaged. Instead, the aircraft is typically retired and/or scrapped. Alternatively, an entirely new wing may be fabricated and purchased at a high cost, again by securing the new skin to the new underlying wing structure in a manner as described herein. Such ensures that the necessary manufacturing tolerances of the aircraft wing remain intact; however, in many cases, the underlying wing structure remains structurally sound even when the overlying wing skin has been corroded or damaged from prolonged use and thus this approach results in costly scrap of the original underlying wing structure that remains structurally sound.
To avoid the above-outlined inefficiencies and expenses, some efforts have been undertaken to digitally and/or mathematically model original aircraft wing skins and their underlying wing structures, so as to facilitate duplication of the fastener hole pattern on a new aircraft wing skin. These efforts have, however, largely failed due to the inability of digital and/or mathematical modeling techniques to account for physical parameters, such as the changing thermal characteristics of the aircraft wing skins and their underlying wing structures over periods of time in which the modeling would occur. Specifically, due to environmental changes, misalignments would nevertheless arise in these types of digital and/or mathematical modeling techniques.
Accordingly, systems and methods are needed for precisely replicating a fastener hole pattern of an aircraft wing such that a damaged wing skin may be replaced with a new wing skin that may be coupled to an existing and structurally sound underlying wing structure. Still further, innovative and cost effective life extension programs are of critical importance in maintaining flightworthiness and ongoing usefulness in operation of legacy aircraft platforms.